Only When i Laugh

When Doris Walker frantically recruits a last minute replacement for a drunken Santa for Macy's Christmas parade, he seems just ideal for he job and perhaps for good reason - he says his name is Kris Kringle and that he's the real Santa Claus. She pays him no mind and at the department store, he's proving be popular as well. He seems to be able to speak many languages and knows just what kids would like to have and creates a bit of a sensation when he refers shoppers to other stores rather than Macy's. When Kris has a run-in with the Department store's psychological tester, the man tries to have him committed leading to a court case where Doris' lawyer neighbor Fred Gailey tries to prove in court that Kris is the real Santa Claus. More important to Kris throughout all of this is to get Doris and her daughter Susan to believe in him.

A young priest, Father Chisholm is sent to China to establish a Catholic parish among the non-Christian Chinese. While his boyhood friend, also a priest, flourishes in his calling as a priest in a more Christian area of the world, Father Chisholm struggles. He encounters hostility, isolation, disease, poverty and a variety of set backs which humble him, but make him more determined than ever to succeed. Over the span of many years he gains acceptance and a growing congregation among the Chinese, through his quiet determination, understanding and patience.

Lively and bustling with sounds, movie screenings in Japan during the silent film era were anything but silent. Silent films in Japan were rarely silent. Screenings were accompanied by live music performed by bands of musicians and narration by katsudo benshi or motion picture narrators. Movie theaters in Japan were home to exciting live performances where the trinity of images, music and narrating conjured up the magic of cinema. The Talking Silents series from Digital Meme recreates this unique Japanese screening format.

In the early 1900s, an American businessman was kidnapped by a rebellious Arab chieftain, principally as a means to… embarrass the sultan of Morocco. This abduction sparked the threat of armed intervention by President Theodore Roosevelt, which was never carried out. In The Wind and the Lion, the unattractive male captive is replaced by the gorgeous female Mrs. Pedecaris, an American widow played by Candice Bergen. The ruthless but essentially decent Arab chief Raisuli is portrayed by Sean Connery, while Teddy Roosevelt is depicted as a jingoistic blowhard by Brian Keith. The film's main theme that of America's emergence as a world power is largely secondary to the growing mutual-respect relationship between Mrs. Pedecaris and Raisuli. After releasing his hostage, Raisuli is himself captured by German forces, who at the behest of the Kaiser are seeking out methods of laying the groundwork for what would evolve into World War I. Mrs. Pedecaris must then help Raisuli escape.

Of all the cinematic New Waves that broke over the world in the 1960s, the one in Czechoslovakia was among the most fruitful, fascinating, and radical. With a wicked sense of humor and a healthy streak of surrealism, a group of fearless directors - including eventual Oscar winners Miloš Forman and Ján Kadár - began to use film to speak out about the hypocrisy and absurdity of the Communist state. A defining work was the 1966 omnibus film Pearls of the Deep, which introduced five of the movement’s essential voices: Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Jiří Menzel, Jan Němec, and Evald Schorm. This series presents that title, along with five other crucial works that followed close on its heels, one from each of those filmmakers - some dazzlingly experimental, some arrestingly realistic, all singular expressions from a remarkable time and place.

Six superlative works from the internationally acclaimed Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieslowski. Includes Kieslowski's narrative debut, The Scar (1976), a dramatic film about an earnest Communist Party member who's thrown into the center of a complicated political battle. Jerzy Stuhr stars in Camera Buff (1979), a biting political satire about a factory worker's fascination with an 8mm movie camera. The man's curious obsession leads to consequences both comedic and tragic. No End (1985) is a sublime blend of thematic elements both political and spiritual. The film tells the story of a young widow who expresses her love for her dead husband by taking up the cause of striking workers. Blind Chance (1987) is a narrative essay on chance and destiny about a middle-aged man who's allowed to sample three distinct outcomes that hinge upon whether he catches or misses a speeding train. A Short Film About Killing (1988) and A Short Film About Love (1988) are masterful feature-length spin-offs of episodes from The Decalogue. The former won the European Film Academy Award for "Best European Film" in 1988.

Two young Swedish children experience the many comedies and tragedies of their family, the Ekdahls.

In 1886, in the Victorian London, the corrupt Lord Henry Wotton meets the pure Dorian Gray posing for talented painter Basil Hallward. Basil paints Dorian's portrait and gives the beautiful painting and an Egyptian sculpture of a cat to him while Henry corrupts his mind and soul telling that Dorian should seek pleasure in life. Dorian wishes that his portrait could age instead of him. Dorian goes to a side show in the Two Turtles in the poor neighborhood of London and he falls in love with the singer Sibyl Vane. Dorian decides to get married with her and tells to Lord Henry that convinces him to test the honor of Sibyl. Dorian Gray leaves Sibyl and travels abroad and when he returns to London, Lord Henry tells him that Sibyl committed suicide for love. Along the years, Dorian's friends age while he is still the same, but his picture discloses his evilness and corruptive life. Can he still have salvation or is his soul trapped in the doomed painting?

Bloomington, Minnesota, 1967: Jewish physics lecturer Larry Gopnik is a serious and a very put-upon man. His daughter is stealing from him to save up for a nose job, his pot-head son, who gets stoned at his own bar-mitzvah, only wants him round to fix the TV aerial and his useless brother Arthur is an unwelcome house guest. But both Arthur and Larry get turfed out into a motel when Larry's wife Judy, who wants a divorce, moves her lover, Sy, into the house and even after Sy's death in a car crash they are still there. With lawyers' bills mounting for his divorce, Arthur's criminal court appearances and a land feud with a neighbour Larry is tempted to take the bribe offered by a student to give him an illegal exam pass mark. And the rabbis he visits for advice only dole out platitudes. Still God moves in mysterious - and not always pleasant - ways, as Larry and his family will find out.

University scientist Professor Chambers (Kenne Duncan) has succeeded in perfecting his Cyclotrode, a powerful atomic weapon that can be used to destroy any electrically-powered device. A mysterious master criminal who calls himself The Crimson Ghost promptly sets out to gain control of this valuable new invention, with the assistance of a gang of thugs and a sinister array of scientific gadgets. Chambers’ colleague Duncan Richards (Charles Quigley), a noted criminologist, tirelessly battles the Ghost and his followers, aided by university secretary Diana Farnsworth (Linda Stirling) and warmly supported by a quartet of university scientists–one of whom, however, is secretly the Crimson Ghost himself.